The Virginian

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

“Class is elitist,” says Lacan; however, according to Dietrich[2] , it is not so much class that is elitist, but rather the dialectic, and eventually the futility, of class. Thus, Lacan promotes the use of precapitalist deappropriation to deconstruct capitalism. Prinn[3] states that the works of Gibson are not postmodern.

If one examines the neocapitalist paradigm of consensus, one is faced with a choice: either reject deconstructivist discourse or conclude that culture may be used to oppress the Other. In a sense, an abundance of theories concerning subcapitalist discourse exist. If the neocapitalist paradigm of consensus holds, we have to choose between deconstructivist discourse and structuralist socialism.

However, the rubicon of postpatriarchial capitalist theory which is a central theme of Gibson’s Count Zero is also evident in Neuromancer. The main theme of the works of Gibson is not theory as such, but posttheory.

It could be said that the subject is contextualised into a Lyotardist narrative that includes truth as a totality. Debord’s model of postpatriarchial capitalist theory implies that language is intrinsically meaningless, but only if the premise of the subpatriarchial paradigm of discourse is invalid; if that is not the case, Sartre’s model of the neocapitalist paradigm of consensus is one of “cultural desituationism”, and thus part of the fatal flaw of consciousness.

Thus, in Pattern Recognition, Gibson examines deconstructivist discourse; in Mona Lisa Overdrive, although, he affirms the predialectic paradigm of narrative. Lyotard’s essay on deconstructivist discourse states that sexuality is used to reinforce hierarchy.

Terms that we hope not to see again in 2014

It seems that lots of people are making lists of words that they hope will not be used again. Never one to miss an opportunity to go with the flow, here’s my list of terms that I hope will never be seen again.

“War on women.” It takes chutzpa for a political party that includes pornographer Larry Flynt, Anthony (see my selfie) Weiner, Bill (Better put some ice on that) Clinton, Bob (filthy) Filner and Teddy (Mary Jo Kopechne is unavailable to comment) Kennedy. It seems you can make millions exposing women’s vaginas, grope, rape and drown women, but object to paying for their birth control pills and you’re waging war on them.

“Enrolled.” This is a term that’s mean to imply that if you go to a website to shop for insurance you are actually buying insurance. What it really means is that you have found out how hideously expensive ObamaCare is and you hope that you won’t get sick because you can’t afford the “new and better” insurance.

“Affordable Care Act.” An Orwellian title for a law that forces your insurance company to cancel the policy that you like and will fine you unless you to buy a policy that covers maternity care for men and menopausal women, with premiums that are multiples of your old policy and deductibles that will won’t pay out until the bills get so high that you will have to sell you children into slavery.

“Generation X, Y, or Z.” Look, I don’t know what these letters are supposed to mean. Remember when we spoke of teen agers, people in their twenties, or the middle aged? People had a pretty good grasp of what you were talking about. X, Y, and Z don’t mean a damn thing except in the minds of the idiots who invented these things.

“Department of Justice.” John Mitchell ran a cleaner, less politicized Justice Department while presiding over Watergate. Eric Holder has turned the DOJ into the law firm of the Democrat Party with the primary focus on insuring that when I die, I’ll begin voting for the Democrats. Under Obama the Department of Justice is an oxymoron.

“Internal Revenue Service.” Like the DOJ, the IRS has become the enforcement arm of the Obama Administration. Realizing that Al Capone was jailed for evading taxes rather than murder, Team Obama realized that it could bully, harass and intimidate lots of his political adversaries by threatening them with the IRS. Perhaps we can call it the Infernal Revenue Service.

“Zero Tolerance.” The admission that government employees are so stupid that they lack any ability to use either judgment or common sense. That means that if your child eats his Pop Tart the wrong way, or pretends to shoot you with an imaginary bow and arrow, he has committed a crime and must be punished. Period, as Obama would say.

“Minority.” A protected class that gets special privileges and exemptions. Even if they are a majority of the population ... like women.

The NY Slimes is now, like Shakespeare's Richard III, no longer trying to hide its mendacity. It writes article to advance the causes of its favored politicos, like Hillary Clinton, and slimes those whose defend the free market.

John Hinderaker at Powerline provides us a current example (read the whole thing).

Academic research of all kinds receives funding from a variety of sources. Does the money taint the research? That is a complicated question that sometimes deserves to be asked. But this hit piece by David Kocieniewski in the New York Times, titled “Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward,” is a disgrace.

The place where actual corruption takes place is the government/academic nexus.

The obvious examples are the global warming alarmists who have received billions of dollars in subsidies from the U.S. government. Climate alarmists are swimming in cash because they produce “research,” which is often merely a bad joke, that supports the federal government’s desire to assert more power over the American economy and your own life-style. Will the Times do an expose on, say, Michael Mann? Will they send a FOIA request to Penn State and scrutinize Mann’s emails? Will they draw an invidious connection between government money and the conclusions that climate alarmists conveniently assert, even though they are scientifically absurd? Will David Kocieniewski author an article in the Times titled, “Academics Who Defend Federal Government Reap Reward?”

Just kidding. The linkage between politics and “journalism” is now complete. In a corrupt rag like the New York Times, it is pointless to look for anything other than political advocacy.

2013 and George W. Bush’s diabolical climate change machine.

As we draw the curtain on 2013 we are grateful for the fact that our particular part of the economy thrived even as record number of American are wore off than ever, losing not just their jobs, depleting their savings, losing their health insurance, their doctors and being threatened with fines unless they pay for worse insurance named after it's creator, ObamaCare.

Looking over another poll from The Christian Science Monitor regarding the ten biggest stories of the year, we find floods in Colorado, tornados in Oklahoma, terrorism in Massachusetts, Edward Snowden’s revelations of widespread snooping on the American public by the National Security Agency, the demise of the Defense of Marriage Act, and the disastrous debut of the billion-dollar Obamacare web site.

In the same article, Bud Norman mentions some positive events:

... the escape of those young women in Ohio who had been held captive in a basement for years by a sex fiend, George Zimmerman’s escape from a politically correct lynch mob, the defeat of gun control legislation in Congress, and the brief partial-shutdown of the United States’ government ... and the year that a Louisiana duck-call entrepreneur got away with expressing unsanctioned opinions regarding sexuality, despite the outrage of all the right people

And as the year end, we are heartened by the saga of the shipload of Climate Warmers stuck in the Antarctic ice even as most of the MSM tries desperately to hide their objective ... to show that there's no ice at the South Pole because of your SUV. We blame George W. Bush’s diabolical climate change machine.

As we usher out the old year, let us pray that the New Year will be better, that the spectacular failure of ObamaCare will take the rest of the rotten, kleptographic neo-Fascist ideology that is Liberalism with it. Let us pray.

Monday, December 30, 2013

Death doesn’t necessarily disqualify you from voting in New York City.

Investigators posing as dead voters were allowed to cast ballots for this year’s primary and general elections, thanks to antiquated Board of Election registration records and lax oversight by poll workers, authorities said.

Global Warmer Ship Stuck In Ice

It turns out that the "research" vessel, the Russian flagged MV Akademik Shokalskiy is really an expedition of "global warming" hoaxers who decided to go to the South Pole during the pole's summer to bring us film of polar bears drowning because of you car. Unfortunately for the hoaxers, their ship got caught in the growing ice and the rescue ships that tried to free them failed ... because of too much ice.

Where was I? Oh, yes, in Antarctica. I am sure that by now all of you have read about a "research" vessel has become trapped in the ice in Antarctica and how various rescue efforts have run afoul of "bad weather" and ice. At least two ice breakers have had to give up efforts to rescue the trapped ship because of the thick ice. The media, of course, is downplaying the real nature of the trip by the "research" vessel, the Russian flagged MV Akademik Shokalskiy. On board this ship is an expedition led by well-known Australian global warmist scientist, Chris Turney. Who is he? Just so happens he has a website where he lays out his views on climate change. He also happens to be a founder of Carbonscape, a company which helps "fix" carbon, and bills itself as "carbon negative" and all sorts of other greenie mumbo-jumbo (read it for yourselves). So he, like Al Gore, has a vested interest, a vested financial interest in promoting the global warming hoax. Do you expect balanced scientific research from Professor Turney? Hmmm . . ..

Anyhow, he got funding from the UK's BBC and Australia's ABC, to charter a ship and head for the Antarctic where he was going to report on the declining sea ice. Just as the warmists make assumptions, I think we can make some, too. He was going to provide all sorts of moving testimony of how manmade global warming is ruining Antarctica--conveniently skipping over that it is summer in Antarctica. He would have given us some touching film of a baby penguin drifting off to sea on a melting chunk of ice, crying for his parents as poor chick broiled in the merciless heat caused by my Chevy Tahoe. He found something else. He found what even the Washington Post had to acknowledge, that Antarctic sea ice has reached a record level.

And over at Newsbusters, they are pointing out that the MSM is doing their best to deny what's really going on.

Somewhere far, far to the south where it is summer, a group of global warming scientists are trapped in the Antarctic ice. If you missed the irony of that situation, it is because much of the mainstream media has glossed over that rather inconvenient bit of hilarity. As an example here is an Associated Press story that avoids mentioning the real mission of the scientists aboard the icebound Russian ship:

The Snow Dragon icebreaker came within 7 miles (11 kilometers) of the Russian ship MV Akademik Shokalskiy, which has been stuck since Christmas Eve, but had to retreat after the ice became too thick, said expedition spokesman Alvin Stone.

The Akademik Shokalskiy, which has been on a research expedition to Antarctica, got stuck Tuesday after a blizzard's whipping winds pushed the sea ice around the ship, freezing it in place. The ship wasn't in danger of sinking, and there are weeks' worth of supplies for the 74 scientists, tourists and crew on board, but the vessel cannot move.

So what was the exact mission of these scientists? AP is rather vague about this reporting only:

The scientific team on board the research ship — which left New Zealand on Nov. 28 — had been recreating Australian explorer Douglas Mawson's century-old voyage to Antarctica when it became trapped. They plan to continue their expedition after they are freed, expedition leader Chris Turney said.

Um, there is a bit more to the expedition than merely following in the footsteps of a century-old voyage. But what that mission really is, AP won't say. If AP is vague about the mission's purpose, Reuters provides even less information.

Cruz has what other Republicans and many conservatives do not have: conviction and a strong belief system. He doesn’t grope for what he will say next, does not use passive words to seek an interviewer’s approval, or dance all around an issue to avoid speaking the truth. We need an army of Cruz’s to set this country right again.

I should add the he doesn't buy into he implied assumptions of the MSM. Note how he handles the question about the government shut-down.

... in peacetime troops are taught to drive carefully, in order to avoid accidents. But in combat the safest form of driving is fast and, to peacetime sensibilities, reckless. Even if commanders seek to practice “combat driving” in peacetime they do so in the knowledge that after a few bad accidents orders will come down to not drive like that because it causes bad publicity.

...

Then you must learn how Mister Grenade can be your friend, even on the crowded streets of a city like Baghdad or Kandahar. If your vehicle has a glove compartment, re-label it as the “grenade compartment.” Carry one smoke, one fragmentation and one tear gas grenade. If you’re stuck in traffic and the situation outside it starting to look dicey, then drop a smoke grenade out the window and try to get moving. You MUST be moving if you drop the tear gas grenade, because you cannot drive through the tears. Most other drivers will give you a wide berth when they see the smoke or tear gas grenade go off. For those who keep coming, with evil intent, the fragmentation grenade may come in handy (it is good for getting at bad people hiding behind something.) Remember, when using grenades, do not touch the pin until the grenade is outside the window. Accidents happen, and having a smoke grenade go off in your vehicle will ruin your day, at the very least ....

If you are in a firefight and you wound one of the enemy, don’t let him crawl or limp away to safety. Kill him. These guys are doing holy war and will keep shooting even if wounded. They cannot hurt you if they are dead.

Overshadowed by the bungled debut of Obamacare and congressional gridlock, most Americans in a new poll dubbed 2013 a bad year that will be quickly forgotten. For more than four-in-10, the perils of 2013 hit home hard.

“Put simply, most Americans are happy to see 2013 go,” said the latest Economist/YouGov Poll.

— 54 percent called 2013 a “bad year” for the world. Another 15 percent called it a “very bad year,” with just 3 percent calling it a “very good year” and 29 percent a “good year.”

We're surprised by these results, but we should not be. Millions are unemployed, more millions are underemployed. Graduates can't find jobs. Obamacare turned out to be a bigger disaster than even we imagined. The Middle East is in flames; it's gotten so bad that thanks to Obama's bungling (or deliberate sabotage) the Israelis and Saudis are actually on the same side on the issue of Iran and the bomb. Deficit control is not even on Obama's agenda, neither is jobs, the economy or repairing our foreign relations. Scandal after scandal surfaced once the re-election of the Worst President Ever was safely behind the State Run Media.

The only thing that's going right are corporate profits, and it was a great year for the stock market which is why for us, (we manage money) it was a good year. We do not expect a repeat in 2014, which may give some hope to the two-thirds who had a bad year.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

A day in the Life

The Unusual Courage of Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn does not suffer fools gladly. He’s a Canadian born conservative columnist with a rapier wit, not just slaying but flaying the object of his wrath. Here’s what he said about Michael Mann, the inventor of the discredited “hockey stock” in the ClimateGate fiasco.

Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing.

If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.

Actually, Steyn was unusually mild here, but it was enough to get Mann to include Steyn, National Review, Rand Simberg and others in a lawsuit for defamation unless National Review deleted Steyn's post. National Review declined.

Mann decided to proceed with his suit which was heard in DC Superior Court under Judge Natalie Combs Greene. The latest development is that Judge Combs Greene had retired and because of errors her rulings for the plaintiff, Mann, have been voided and the case begins anew.

Dr. Michael Mann’s lawyer, John Williams, filed a fraudulent complaint falsely representing his client as a Nobel Laureate, and accusing us of the hitherto unknown crime of defaming a Nobel Laureate.

After Charles C W Cooke and others exposed Dr. Mann’s serial misrepresentation of himself as a Nobel Prize winner, Mann’s counsel decided to file an amended complaint with the Nobel falsehood removed.

Among her many staggering incompetences, DC Superior Court judge Natalia Combs-Greene then denied NR’s motion to dismiss the fraudulent complaint while simultaneously permitting Mann’s lawyers to file an amended complaint.

The appellate judges have now tossed out anything relating to Mann’s original fraudulent complaint, including Judge Combs-Greene’s unbelievably careless ruling in which the obtuse jurist managed to confuse the defendants, and her subsequent ruling in which she chose to double-down on her own stupidity. Anything with Combs-Greene’s name on it has now been flushed down the toilet of history.

So everyone is starting afresh with a new judge, a new complaint from the plaintiff, and new motions to dismiss from the defendants. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Mann’s misrepresentation of himself as a Nobel Laureate and Combs-Greene’s inept management of her case means that all parties have racked up significant six-figure sums just to get back to square one. In a real courthouse – in London, Toronto, Dublin, Singapore, Sydney – Dr Mann would be on the hook for what he has cost all the parties through his fraudulent complaint. But, this being quite the most insane “justice system” I have ever found myself in, instead the costs of the plaintiff’s vanity, his lawyer’s laziness and the judge’s incompetence must apparently be borne by everyone.

He went on to say that in many cases, it's not whether you win or lose, but the fact that you are forced to spend tons of money and time to defend yourself: "The process is the punishment."

That’s quite daring. I know of no one else who has had the courage to go after a judge while his case is still pending. Judges protect each other and pretend that much of the judiciary is not made up of lawyers who received a political appointment for toeing the party line. They pretend that many of their colleagues do not fold, spindle and mutilate the law to achieve their personal objectives. There are exceptions, of course, as there are in any occupation; there are good doctors and bad doctors, good investment managers and bad ones. But the Judiciary is by its nature, and the manner in which judges are made, a political animal. That is why appointments to the Supreme and inferior course are now bitter political and ideological battles. Judges don’t simply read the law and decide a case based on the facts, in many cases the law is what they say it is and the law as written be damned.

To protect that power, judges have to make sure that the public continues to believe in the myth of judicial impartiality. That means that people who fail to pay proper obeisance to judges imperil their case and why lawyers will tell their clients to shut up lest they run afoul of a judge whose sees his role as enforcer of judicial supremacy.

All of which is a long way of saying that Mark Steyn is exceptionally brave for writing an article attacking a member of the judiciary as incompetent, careless, obtuse, confused and stupid. I am reminded of the quotation by Voltaire: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” I have no doubt that Steyn is never going to be ruled – or cowed – by the judiciary. My hat is off to him.

On a more serious note, it has long been known by both the Left & Right that the culture has more effect on politics than politics on culture. That's why Liberal group just tried to sink Duck Dynasty and why political correctness via speech codes are such a powerful tool in shaping the country.

A very good analysis on the media, culture, Liberalism and why the Left controls your thoughts and your speech even when you may not agree with them. The Left shows their beliefs not by preaching but by showing. That's what the Robertson family does and why they are so popular. The show is the very opposite of preachy. It only ends with the family at dinner beginning with a prayer. The Robertson’s Christian faith is just one part, at the very end. The show is about the kids, their relationships, work, fishing & hunting & shooting. It's about the things that most people do in a setting that many would like to have. I mean, how many people would love to do these things and by the way, get rich by making duck calls?

Read the whole thing. But here's the bottom line:

The threat of the Robertsons isn’t in Phil’s politically incorrect comments. The threat is that this family has figured out how right-wing politics and Evangelical Christianity can influence pop culture without being the punch line or the bad guy. While the left has spent decades making conservatives look like idiots and Christians look like bigots, Duck Dynasty reminds average Americans that these views are mainstream. The left is alerted but will those on the right take advantage of what the Robertsons have created?

A&E has decided to resume filming DuckDynasty “later this spring with the entire Robertson family.”

The "Duck Dynasty" family says they are excited to return to work after A&E Network announced Friday it would resume filming their hit show with Phil Robertson next spring in a reversal of its decision last week to suspend him for comments he made about homosexuality.

In an exclusive statement to FoxNews.com, the family said it was "excited to keep making a quality TV show for our dedicated fans, who have showed us wonderful support. We will continue to represent our faith and values in the most positive way through 'Duck Dynasty' and our many projects that we are currently working on.

"The outpouring of support and prayer has encouraged and emboldened us greatly."...

In a statement released late Friday afternoon, A&E said, “While Phil's comments made in the (GQ) interview reflect his personal views based on his own beliefs, and his own personal journey, he and his family have publicly stated they regret the ‘coarse language’ he used and the misinterpretation of his core beliefs based only on the article. He also made it clear he would ‘never incite or encourage hate.’"

The network added that “Duck Dynasty is not a show about one man's views. It resonates with a large audience because it is a show about family, a family that America has come to love. As you might have seen in many episodes, they come together to reflect and pray for unity, tolerance and forgiveness. These are three values that we at A&E Networks also feel strongly about.

“So after discussions with the Robertson family, as well as consulting with numerous advocacy groups, A&E has decided to resume filming Duck Dynasty later this spring with the entire Robertson family.”

Defining "adequate" down

(CNSNews.com) -- Females in the Marine Corps currently are not required to do even a single pull-up, and a deadline mandating that by Jan. 1, 2014, they be able to do at least 3 pull-ups as part of their training has been delayed for at least a year, the Corps quietly announced on social media.Unlike their female counterparts, male Marines have long been required to do at least 3 pullups as part of the Physical Fitness Test (PFT). That's the minimum requirement for males.Female Marines are required, however, to do a flexed-arm hang from a bar, and their PFT score is calculated based upon how long they can properly hang on the bar. Currently, “women aren’t able to make the minimum standard of three pull-ups,” Marine spokesman Capt. Eric Flanagan told CNSNews.com. Fifty-five percent of female recruits tested at the end of boot camp were unable to do three pull-ups (1 percent of male recruits also failed).

Marine officers told NPR off-the-record that, given the three-pull-ups rule, they were afraid of losing “not only new recruits, but also current female Marines who can’t pass the test.”

Why does it matter?

Pull-ups have been used to test Marines’ upper body strength for over 40 years. The ability to pull-up one’s own body weight over a bar shows the upper body strength that, in combat, is needed to lift fallen comrades, pull one’s self over a wall, and carry heavy munitions. Combat Marines also carry a pack that weighs around 90 pounds, with gunners carrying an additional 50 or 60 pounds.

Well, you can always leave fallen comrades behind, give you a boost and get the guy to carry the packages. Oh, is that sexist?

Political correctness is killing people, but not the feminists who are getting their victims killed.

The lonely lives of scientists

The technique was developed by reproductive scientists at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa's John A. Burns School of Medicine.The same method was used to create the world's first glow-in-the-dark rabbits in Turkey earlier this year, where they are currently working to create a glowing sheep.

A Massachusetts teenager was arrested on Christmas day after police say he pulled a knife on his father because he did not receive an iPhone he wanted for Christmas. 18-year-old Alexander Torres was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery and malicious damage to a motor vehicle, according to Brockton Police Lt. Bruce Zeidman.

Friday, December 27, 2013

Worshiping Equality

Stacy McCain has an excellent post on the subject of equality and the drive to put women into the military.

Liberalism’s obsession with equality requires us to pretend that such distinctions as “male” and “female” are ultimately meaningless, and that any policy which recognizes these categories as significant must be abolished in order to prevent discrimination.

This is where the rhetoric of liberalism is exposed as a species of madness. While proclaiming their devotion to “diversity,” what liberals are actually striving for is homogeneity and conformity: All institutions must be equally diverse....

Perhaps the best example of this weird worldview is the crusade for “gender integration” in the military. Liberals believe women must have the “opportunity” to march 12 miles in full combat gear and engage America’s enemies in firefights or it’s “discrimination.”

Unfortunately, this “discrimination” can only be abolished by lowering standards, as the case of Kara Hultgreen demonstrated nearly two decades ago. Under pressure from the radical avant-garde of political correctness, the Navy and the Air Force had gotten into a competition to see which service could produce the first female fighter pilot, which resulted (predictably) in the destruction of a $38 million jet and the death of its unqualified pilot ...

whatever the number of female jet fighter pilots in the U.S. military today, every one of them is stained by tokenism, their status as aviators tainted by the knowledge that they “qualified” only because they were graded on the curve, so that qualifed male candidates were flunked out of training merely to make a way to fill a gender quota.

Nobody in uniform — and certainly no officer who aspires to promotion — can speak that truth out loud, however, and so there is a silent conspiracy of dishonesty, everyone going along with the androgynous myth that justifies the “gender integration” policy.

One can always say that, in a nation of 300 million people, there must be some women who are physically strong enough to endure the rigors required of candidates for elite military roles. But even if we stipulate this, the overwhelming majority of qualified candidates for those roles will always be male and therefore, even if you had no traditionalist objections to women serving in combat, only a fanatical obsession with “equality” could justify abolishing the all-male status of those roles.

Duck Humor

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy presents some poll results that attempt to show that a plurality of Americans approve of homosexual sex. It’s another one in a long line of articles that try to convince people who consider homosexual relations as a sin – a la Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame – that they're out of step.

One question that has come up in the Duck Dynasty dispute is how typical is Phil Roberston’s view that homosexual behavior is a sin.

In recent years, the public has been moving from a majority believing that sexual relations between people of the same gender is always wrong to roughly equal numbers believing that it’s always wrong and believing that it’s not wrong at all.

Indeed, less than two years ago, our President finally came around to embrace views on gay marriage that I expect a majority of us at the Volokh Conspiracy have long held.

In searching through polls archived at the Roper Center, I found these surveys showing the split over gay sex:

May 2013: Do you think it is a sin, or not, to engage in homosexual behavior?

(Source: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press Political Survey)

45% Is a sin

45% Is not a sin

10% Don’t know/Refused

March 2013: Do you personally believe that sex between two adults of the same gender is a sin, or not?

If the fact that about half the people in the country are willing to openly state that they agree with Robertson, despite the condemnation of people like Barnett - the ones who dominate the mass media and academia - is a surprise, it may mean that Barnett lives in a bubble at Georgetown.

The entire post is designed to do just what it does -- give information to the intellectually curious on both sides.

That bigoted views on gay sex are so widespread (and are religiously based) makes the challenge all the greater. These views on homosexuality are sadly quite mainstream, indeed, the majority view for men and for those living in Robertson's region of the country. For those who welcome the network's actions, with this information one can get a better sense of what the one is up against. People in my part of the intellectual world often lack basic understanding of the actual views of the American public. It's not just some strange guy out of the mainstream.

For those who oppose the network's actions, one can see that his view of gay sex as sinful is a mainstream view, though no longer in the majority.

As for motivations, the demography of viewpoint diversity is part of what I do.

Really, make of the facts what you will. In my post, other than implying my long-time support for gay rights, I expressed no opinion on Robertson or A & E. As an atheist myself, I do not view the Bible as other than the works of men who lived a long time ago.

Which I call bullshit. “The entire post is designed to do just what it does -- give information to the intellectually curious on both sides.” No it doesn't. I'm not sure how many people are curious about the sexual antics of about 2% of the population; who approves and who disapproves and who gives a damn. Because that's not what the controversy over Phil Robertson's remarks are about.

It’s designed to put Barnett's finger on the scale by using polling to make people who believe that some things are a sin (or as he might put it “sin”) shut up because their views are becoming less popular. Note he refers to people who believe that homosexual sex is a sin, like adultery, are bigots. It is also designed to convince people that the way to be part of the “intellectual” in-crowd, to be accepted by professors of law are "sadly" mistaken and need to be re-educated by their betters who don't live in the Louisiana swamps. They must be educated to adopt the view that homosexual sex is normal, perhaps even somewhat noble because it’s somehow associated with inter-racial marriage; something that someone inevitably brings up in comments to posts like his at Volokh. This is particularly true of the rigid – and rather totalitarian atmosphere of academia where Robertson’s view of sex and sin is simply not permitted to be uttered. Where evangelical atheists congregate to compliment each other on their goodness. People in Barnett's part of the intellectual world are doing their best to de-legitimize the views of the mainstream that disagrees with their views of morality. Slickly done.

I'll give Phil Robertson the last word.

Oh, and my presence at Volokh is no longer accepted. That's fine, I'll stand with Phil. His swamp is healthier and more accepting than Barnett's.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Alex Coe, writer for the Los Angeles Times, raises an age-old question without quite answering it. She reviews Wendy Lower’s book Hitler’s Furies, in which we are told to prepare ourselves for the thunderous news that many of the most brutal killers of the Holocaust were women; creatively cruel and sedulously murderous women — and most of them got away.

But to return to the question, why are women cruel? The answers offered in the review appear to be cast in the standard framework of sexual politics and male domination. “Violence, as Lower points out, was often entangled with both intimacy and recreation for women in the Nazi East. It was not uncommon to pass mass graves while taking a lover’s stroll in the forest, or picnic near a concentration camp within visible range of smoke rising from a crematorium.” It was all kinky sex control of some sort we are told.

But I have another theory. The Nazi women were so apt to cruelty because they were “good and obedient” citizens. It wasn’t that they were all sex slaves of some sort. They were just good farm girls who would go and slaughter the chicken while the men sat around and yarned. Of course it’s not that simple, but the link between what is regarded as exemplary behavior and cruelty has been known for a long time.

The people who are most apt to kill you for the greater good are intellectuals.

My first glimpse into the connection between the qualities of earnestness and cruelty was during the anti-Marcos underground years. I observed that the communist ideology took deepest root in people I had heretofore regarded as clean-living and pious people, the seminarians and religious, the properly brought up, college educated, hard-studying youth. Fanaticism seemed to have a special appeal to them. By contrast it took less of a grip on petty thieves, crooks and rogues precisely because they were incurably sly, undisciplined and weak.

I asked someone once why the hard core communists were so humorless. The answer was memorable and succinct. “They take themselves too seriously.”

For there is nothing so lethal as a young man — or woman — who is completely convinced that he or she is engaged in saving the world. It is probably no coincidence that some of the worst and most pitiless men in the world are either academics or consider themselves religious. Abimael Guzman, for example, is a great favorite of that other revolutionary academic Jose Maria Sison, and is almost mind-bogglingly cruel. Sison’s other favorite is Kim Jong-un a man who will machine-gun his girlfriend or execute his uncle if it serves the cause of the party.

Of course they are largely academics, before they become mass murderers.

There are no greater hotbeds of leftist fanaticism today that the academe. That the academe has become increasingly the province of women is not coincidental.

There may have been more cruel women than men because girls are more serious than boys. Every tyrant knows this and makes a special effort to recruit the intellectuals, the women and the earnest. The people who dot their i’s, make sure the faucet is turned off and always tie their shoelaces. Dictators don’t do very well by and large, among weepy, “unreliable” and lumpen who are irredeemably riddled with human vice.

Theodore Dalrymple's 2006 book review is particularly apt today when freedom and good is under siege.

In his introduction, Professor Hollander quotes Solzhenitsyn. According to Solzhentitsyn, the sine qua non of mass murder as a way of life, or as an industry, is ideology. Before the advent of ideology, people only did harm within a relatively restricted circle, for example in the ruthless furtherance of their own careers. Macbeth is a very bloody play, but only those who in some way stood between Macbeth and the throne had much to fear from him. Ordinary people, at least, could stand aside in the conflict.

There was no standing aside in the ideologised state: either you were for the government, the leader and the ideology, or you were against them. Indeed, once dialectics became the master science, being personally in favour of them was not enough; you had to be objectively in favour of them, that is to say to have no blemish on your record, such as a bourgeois birth, knowledge of anyone with such a birth, or intellectual interests. (An interesting history could be written of the murder or imprisonment during the twentieth century of people who wore glasses, merely because they wore glasses. Communists in particular were inclined to believe that people who wore glasses were their enemies, because – despite their own materialist conception of history, according to which the driving force of history is economic relations rather than ideas – shortsightedness is particularly prevalent among intellectuals, and intellectuals, at least outside the humanities of departments of western universities, have ideas that might cast doubt on the ultimate truth of communist ideology: a backhanded tribute to the fact that ideas ultimately rule the world. An interesting exception among eyeglass-phobic dictators was Macias Nguema, the first, democratically elected, president of Equatorial Guinea, subsequently overthrown by his nephew, the current president, who killed or drove into exile a third of the population, and who had a special animus against those who wore eyeglasses. His animus probably arose more from his uncertain personal claims to intellectual distinction than from the mixture of paranoia and gimcrack ideas about neo-colonialism that he picked up third-hand, which was the nearest he came to ideology.)

Where the means justify the end, as they do for most ideologies, mass murder becomes more likely, perhaps even inevitable in ideologised states. The capacity for cruelty, and the enjoyment of cruelty, that lies latent in almost every human heart, then allies itself to a supposedly higher, even transcendent purpose. Original sin meets social conditioning. A vicious circle is set up: and eventually, viciousness itself is taken to be a sign both of loyalty and of higher purpose.

It is curious how even now, after all the calamities of the twentieth century, the lengths to which people are prepared to go to pursue an end is taken by others as a sign of the worthiness if not of the end itself, at least of the motives of the extremists. The fact that people are prepared to blow themselves up in an attempt to murder as many complete strangers as possible is taken as proof of the strength of their humanitarian feelings and outrage at a state of injustice.

And this:

Psychopaths there are, of course, in every time and every place. They are always dangerous, but in some circumstances they are more dangerous than in others. The very qualities that are loathsome at one time are praised as diligence, fervour, loyalty, honesty and so forth at others. Here is a description from the Professor Hollander’s book, written by a Cambodian physician who lived through the three years of Pol Pot’s regime:

… a new interrogator, one I had not seen before, walked downthe row of trees holding a long, sharp knife. I could not makeout their words, but he spoke to the pregnant woman and sheanswered. What happened next makes me nauseous to thinkabout. I can only describe it in the briefest of terms: He cut theclothes off her body, slit her stomach, and took the baby out. Iturned away but there was no escaping the sound of her agony,the screams that slowly subsided into whimpers and after fartoo long lapsed into the merciful silence of death. The killerwalked calmly past me holding the fetus by its neck. When hegot to the prison, just within the range of my vision, he tied astring round the fetus and hung it from the eaves with theothers, which were dried and black and shrunken.

This editorial has been published in the Wall Street Journal every years at Christmas since 1949. This year it seems particularly appropriate.

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.

Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders.

But it came to pass for a while in divers places that the truth did set man free, although the men of darkness were offended and they tried to put out the light. The voice said, Haste ye. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

When you have major media outlets declaratively describing Robertson's expression of his Christian beliefs as "anti-gay," what you are really seeing is major media outlets outing themselves as anti-Christian.

Robertson listed more than a half-dozen sins other than homosexual behavior, including a number of heterosexual behaviors, and "the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers".

It is certainly possible to try to disguise anti-gay bigotry as Christianity. Singling out gay people and not distinguishing between homosexuals as people and homosexual behavior are two of the most glaring examples.

But Robertson did neither. What he did do was to speak a Christian truth about various sins, and the media know this.

Anti-sin is not anti-gay.

But because the media and left are desperate to toxify Christianity as bigotry and bully Christians into silence, Robertson's remarks are seen as the perfect opportunity to do both.

Of course it is an added benefit to the media to try to tarnish a culturally conservative mega-hit, and maybe drive it off the air.

What we have here is nothing more than the media practicing McCarthyism and disguising it as tolerance.

Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

It is a matter of some regret to me that my own editor at this publication does not regard this sort of thing as creepy and repellent rather than part of the vibrant tapestry of what he calls an “awakening to a greater civility”. I’m not inclined to euphemize intimidation and bullying as a lively exchange of ideas – “the use of speech to criticize other speech”, as Mr Steorts absurdly dignifies it. So do excuse me if I skip to the men’s room during his patronizing disquisition on the distinction between “state coercion” and “cultural coercion”. I’m well aware of that, thank you. In the early days of my free-speech battles in Canada, my friend Ezra Levant used a particular word to me: “de-normalize”. Our enemies didn’t particularly care whether they won in court. Whatever the verdict, they’d succeed in “de-normalizing” us — that’s to say, putting us beyond the pale of polite society and mainstream culture. “De-normalizing” is the business GLAAD and the other enforcers are in. You’ll recall Paula Deen’s accuser eventually lost in court — but the verdict came too late for Ms Deen’s book deal, and TV show, and endorsement contracts.

Up north, Ezra and I decided that, if they were going to “de-normalize” us, we’d “de-normalize” them. So we pushed back, and got the entire racket discredited and, eventually, the law repealed. It’s rough stuff, and exhausting, but the alternative is to let the control-freaks shrivel the bounds of public discourse remorselessly so that soon enough you lack even the words to mount an opposing argument. As this commenter to Mr Steorts noted, the point about unearthing two “derogatory” “puerile” yet weirdly prescient gags is that, pace Marx, these days comedy repeats as tragedy.

I am sorry my editor at NR does not grasp the stakes. Indeed, he seems inclined to “normalize” what GLAAD is doing. But, if he truly finds my “derogatory language” offensive, I’d rather he just indefinitely suspend me than twist himself into a soggy pretzel of ambivalent inertia trying to avoid the central point — that a society where lives are ruined over an aside because some identity-group don decides it must be so is ugly and profoundly illiberal. As to his kind but belated and conditional pledge to join me on the barricades, I had enough of that level of passionate support up in Canada to know that, when the call to arms comes, there will always be some “derogatory” or “puerile” expression that it will be more important to tut over. So thanks for the offer, but I don’t think you’d be much use, would you?

Steyn is an awesome writer and I can't top him, but it seems that the new, metro-sexual NR, and its editors are a perfect example of what I was writing about when I wrote Don’t use the Voltaire defense for Phil Robertson.

Dear Cracker Barrel Customer:When we made the decision to remove and evaluate certain Duck Dynasty items, we offended many of our loyal customers. Our intent was to avoid offending, but that’s just what we’ve done.You told us we made a mistake. And, you weren’t shy about it. You wrote, you called and you took to social media to express your thoughts and feelings. You flat out told us we were wrong.We listened.Today, we are putting all our Duck Dynasty products back in our stores.And, we apologize for offending you.We respect all individuals right to express their beliefs. We certainly did not mean to have anyone think different.We sincerely hope you will continue to be part of our Cracker Barrel family.

Fred Reed on the dispensable Maureen Dowd whose contribution to the universe is a negative number.
Hat tip Stacy McCain

Oh god, oh god. Death, taxes, migraine, sinlus drainage, beriberi, and Maureen Dowd, the resentment columnist at the New York Times. On the web I find her at some feminist bitch-in, called Are Men Obsolete? She has this to say to men:

..

“So now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, ‘You know we need you in the way we need ice cream….you'll be more ornamental.”

I was delighted to think that I might be ornamental, no one having suggested the concept until now. I could have used it in high school. Maureen herself is beyond being ornamental, having that injection-molded look that follows the seventh face-lift, probably accomplished by the surgical use of a construction crane.

But I will say this to her:

Listen, Corn Flower. Let’s think over this business of obsolete men. Reflect. You live in New York, in which every building was designed and built by men. You perhaps use the subway, designed, built, and maintained by men. You travel at in a car, invented, designed, and built by men—a vehicle that you don’t understand (what is a cam lobe?) and couldn’t maintain (have you ever changed a tire? Could you even find the tires?), and you do this on roads designed, built, and maintained by men. You fly in aircraft designed, built, and maintained by men, which you do not understand (what, Moon Pie, is a high-bypass turbofan?)

In short, as you run from convention to convention, peeing on hydrants, you depend utterly on men to keep you fed (via tractors designed by men, guided by GPS invented, designed, and launched by men, on farms run by men), and comfy (air conditioning invented…but need I repeat myself?)

I do not want to be unjust. It is not in my nature. While men may be obsolete (unless you want to eat) I cannot say, Apple Cheeks, that feminists are obsolete. They are not. Obsoleteness implies having passed through a period of usefulness.

I do get tired of your hissing and fizzing about the noble sex to which I belong. Mercy, I cry. It is not my fault that Michael Douglas didn’t marry you. He didn’t marry me either, but I don’t hate men because of it. (In fact I am grateful to him, and doubtless he to me).

Don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing against ill-bred viragos—feminism has its place, though I’m not sure where. But let’ me be clear, Buttercup. I don’t want to seem rude—nothing could be more alien to my character—but I do think that you and your littermates might essay a civility exceeding that of menopausing catamounts. In fact, Sweet Potato, if it were not for my innate courtesy I might say that being at once useless and insupportable is stretching things.

A jot—an iota, a tittle, a scintilla—of gratitude might be in order. Should you look around you, you will note that everything that keeps you and the sisterhood from squatting in caves and picking lice from each other’s hair was provided for you by—the horror—men.

Is it not so, Rose Bud? Can you name one thing, with a moving part, that was invented by a feminist?

It seems to me that you gals are like African bushmen, but without their dignity. A bushman looks at a television (Invented by Men: IBM) in astonishment, and says, “Wah! Bad juju! Spirits inside!” He knows he doesn’t understand it and does not presume. His degree of understanding, I suspect, is exactly yours.

But I suppose the shrewery are so busy honking and blowing about socially-constructed this and gender-roles that and patriarchal the-other-thing that you don’t understand that there is anything to understand. Is it not so? When you sit at your computer spewing bile like a legged gall-bladder, are you aware of 2500 years of mathematics, chemistry, solid-state physics, engineering, information theory—all invented by men, the bastards—that go into the blinking screen? Your vituperative ingratitude, Sugar Britches, is undignified.

Don’t use the Voltaire defense for Phil Robertson

It was only a matter of time before the left complained about Phil Robertson. His actual quotes in GQ are almost insignificant – at some point, someone was going to go after him for his views on guns, women, and even his much-hated “yuppie” comments.The surprise should be how liberals dismissed the rise of Duck Dynasty until this fall, when it was too late to stem the show’s popularity. Once it became evident that this family held so much influence, the left suddenly realized they faced the first threat to their decades-long monopoly on popular culture.

The family and its values represent a threat to the Left’s iron grip on the popular culture. It allows no dissent, no deviation from the line. If the Left had its way people watching Duck Dynasty would be like Christians in China meeting in their homes, with closed curtains, to pray and worship God.

But make no mistake, there are no public figures - or none that seek the Uber-culture’s approval - that will defend Phil Robertson without prefacing their remarks by giving us the Voltaire defense of: "I disagree with Robertson but he should have a right to speak his mind"defense.

Stop it.

If you disagree with Robertson, say so. If you agree, say so. But don’t try to have it both ways. That's the way of the waffler, the shyster-lawyer, the one who's been captured by the Liberal culture.

By the same token, the legal defense is nonsense. The law always follows the culture. It's why judges are suddenly discovering the that homosexual marriage is required. If they decided the opposite, their friends and associates, their clubs and social groups would cease inviting them.

For the Christian community, remember the book of Revelation, verse 3:15-16:

Message to the Church in Laodicea

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.

I stand with Phil Robertson and the God of the Bible. Where do you stand?

Merry Christmas from Chuck Norris

Although the Psalms and other Old Testament passages have examples of godly men praying for the death of their oppressors and enemies, many of my christian brothers say that it is, if not a sin, at least un-Christ-like to pray for the death of anyone. That may be so, but I find no prescription against saying that I would not shed a tear if he died a painful death. (I'm not sure if there are proscriptions against grave-dancing, though.)

And this:

The strange thing is, Harry is really a very mediocre fellow, and that is being generous. I've run into him a little bit over forty years. I see Nancy P as being in the same mold of half-witted stumblebums. The evil talent must be lurking unseen.

And finally this:

"I could not attend his funeral, but I did send a note saying I approve."

There have been very powerful and evil men throughout history that have had mediocre minds. What they had in common was an iron will.

So this is what the government snoops mean when they refer to a "back door" to encrypted information. They sell a code that they already know how to crack.

As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.